Abstracts and Available Papers Presented at the
2002 International RERTR Meeting

RERTR ACTIVITIES IN ARGENTINA

P. Adelfang, L. Alvarez, E. Pasqualini

Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica

Departamento Combustibles Nucleares - CAC

Avda. Gral. Paz 1499, (1650) San Martín

Pcia. Buenos Aires - República Argentina

ABSTRACT

The Atomic Energy Commission of Argentina has been an active participant of the RERTR program since 1978. An important milestone of the Argentinean RERTR program was the development and manufacturing at industrial scale of U₃O₈ dispersed fuel and its subsequent application to the conversion of the RA-3 reactor core to LEU fuel.

More recently, our activities were focused on the development of U₃Si₂ fuel with a density of 4.8 gU/cm³ and the improvement of the manufacturing process of this type of fuel. The program to qualify CNEA as a supplier U₃Si₂ dispersed fuels is scheduled to finalize by mid 2003. To hasten this program the main research reactor of Argentina, the RA3, raised its power from 5 MW to 8 Mw in October this year. This is an intermediate step in the program to increase RA-3 power to 10 MW

Currently, one of the main objectives is to develop and qualify the technology for the production of high-density LEU fuel elements using U-Mo alloy. An original way to produce U-Mo powder (the HMD process) was developed and its being upgraded to plant scale production.

Another significant progress was the development of LEU targets for the production of ⁹⁹Mo, in the form of miniplates prepared with dispersed LEU U-Al_x.

The shipment to USA of 207 MTR spent fuels containing US origin highly enriched uranium, successfully carried out in the end of 2000, is another remarkable achievement of the Argentinean RERTR program. This activity was carried out in the framework of the United States Foreign Research Reactor Spent Nuclear Fuel Acceptance Program. The fuels were fabricated in Argentina and used in the RA-3 reactor from 1968 to 1987. The inventory of the shipped HEU spent fuel consisted in 166 standard assemblies and 41 control assemblies.

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